Watson, Benjamin Marston, 1820-1896

Immediately after college, in 1840, Watson became part of the Brook Farm Experiment, a short-lived effort on the part of several Transcendentalists to establish a Utopian community in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. There he met Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller, among other great thinkers and writers. Such experiments have a tendency to fall apart, however, and the members of the Brook Farm community, one by one, eventually drifted off and went their separate ways. Watson returned to his hometown of Plymouth in 1845.

He returned quite changed by the ideals of Transcendentalism. A young man of 25, intelligent and Harvard educated, Marston Watson might have pursued a wide variety of worldly careers. But it was nature that intrigued him most. He envisioned his own little Garden of Eden among the low hills of Plymouth. It would be part arboretum, part experimental garden with rare specimens from all over world, and part commercial farm.

Watson established his Old Colony Nurseries in 1845 on 80 acres of sloping meadow between three hills. In 1846, he had an elegant house built on the estate, designed in the Gothic style by his friend Samuel Longfellow (younger brother of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). Watson called it “Hillside.” In the same year, he married his wife, Mary Russell. Although Watson already had connections with the Transcendentalists, it was his wife who strengthened the ties, making Hillside a special retreat for Concord’s philosophers.

Mary Russell was best friends with another Plymouth girl named Lydia Jackson. It so happened that Ralph Waldo Emerson, during a speaking engagement in Plymouth, met and fell in love with Miss Jackson. They were married in Plymouth in 1835 and lived in Concord. Mary Russell frequently went to visit her best friend, now Lydia Emerson, in Concord. In fact, during one of these visits, she met Henry David Thoreau who apparently tried to woo her by composing a poem for her called, “To the Maiden in the East.” It didn’t work. She married Marston Watson instead.

This strong connection to the Emersons through his wife enabled Watson to realize another ambition. He established a lecture series in 1852 to be held at Leyden Hall on Main Street in Plymouth. These lectures would feature the great names of the Concord circle. And, of course, during their time in Plymouth, many of them stayed with the Watsons at Hillside.

Thus Watson forged strong friendships with Bronson Alcott, Thoreau and poet William Ellery Channing, among others. Apparently, Watson, Alcott and Thoreau were fond of walking the hills and trails for miles surrounding Hillside. As they walked, they freely discussed all manner of philosophy.